CoverMyMeds & GitHub

Industry: Healthcare
Company size: 200+
Location: Offices in Columbus and Cleveland, OH with remote employees across the U.S.

CoverMyMeds converts the manual, paper-based health care process called Prior Authorization (PA) into an electronic workflow. By integrating with more than 360 electronic health records (EHR) systems, 45,000 pharmacies and insurance plans that represent the majority of U.S. prescription volume, CoverMyMeds creates an electronic, faster and more efficient PA process for the industry.

More than 400,000 prescribers use CoverMyMeds to help patients get the medication they need faster. The company processes millions of PA requests each month and uses GitHub Enterprise to build software faster within the heavily regulated healthcare industry.

With medical records at stake, health care companies must adopt strict rules around technology. While necessary, many complicate the collaboration process. When they were looking for a version control platform, the team at CoverMyMeds had to find an efficient way to work together within these rules. Engineering Manager Jon Canady explained, "Due to the industry regulations, we can't put our code on any servers outside the company. Everything has to stay internal. After a free trial of GitHub Enterprise, there was no turning back."

"After a free trial of GitHub Enterprise, there was no turning back."

A more positive recruiting experience

As one of the fastest growing healthcare IT companies in the United States, CoverMyMeds is trying to change what it's like to work as a developer in their industry. Jon explained, "the people we employ know we're not the kind of company they're used to, particularly if they come from within the healthcare industry."

Adopting GitHub Enterprise reinforced this image. "New employees expect to see a mess of software," Jon added, "but we don't have a bulky enterprise system. Everything is connected in one place. They're always very pleased when I say we use GitHub."

Collaboration in a regulated industry

Security requirements not only affect the tools CoverMyMeds can use, they also impact the way the team builds software. As Infrastructure Support Specialist Rob Ball explained, "Many companies deal with the burden of regulations by pushing it off onto tech staff—infrastructure bulks and software developers become overburdened as they try to follow regulations to the letter."

Instead, the team at CoverMyMeds uses GitHub Enterprise to automate their workflow and meet regulatory requirements as part of the development process. Software Developer Graham Conzett added, "When you remove the arbitrary barriers from what people can do on their own, you can focus on hitting the important pieces of security."

For Graham, part of removing barriers is using tools that give developers autonomy over their work. "A lot of bureaucracy builds up over time. If you trust people and let them use the tools that they want to use, you can get out of the way and focus on security that matters."

A communication tool for everyone

For the development team at CoverMyMeds, transparency is key. Software is important to more people than just developers and project managers. The team uses GitHub Enterprise to communicate company-wide about what they build.

Graham explained, "It's not just easier to get in touch with developers, it's also easier to bring in other team members. We can pull people into conversations really easily," he added. "It's simple to create an issue or a pull request, run it by any of our staff members, get approval, and follow up with everyone else."

CoverMyMeds' tooling feeds into GitHub Enterprise so non-technical employees—like account managers and marketers—can file issues into the correct GitHub repository without needing to know the specifics of which products map to what code. Customer issues that previously went into separate trackers are now front and center with the development staff's day-to-day work.

"It's not just easier to get in touch with developers, it's also easier to bring in other team members. We can pull people into conversations really easily."